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Serious disk permissions problems.....

I

itsjustmeee

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Dec 28, 2008
603
7
Without going into detail about how it happened, I have 2 user accounts that are both admin accounts. With the one that has all of my documents, settings, etc, I keep getting the "You do not have sufficient privileges to open this folder" or whatever the message is from time to time. It seems to usually kick in when I try to install a program. One particular program is telling me that it can't access it's own preferences file because of this. I try to go in to right click on folders that seem to have the issue and change the read and write access to "everyone" or admin if it's not there. Is there some way or setting disable or change this globally so that as an admin user I don't have this problem? I'm the only one that uses this mac pro so I don't have any reason to not have access to everything. Any thoughts or help would be appreciated.

And if it matters, I'm using Snow Leopard. And yes, I have tried to repair disk permissions.
 
You should not be modifying permissions manually, you may be unintentionally causing additional problems by doing so haphazardly. You can reset ACLs and home folder permissions by booting to your install DVD, selecting the Password Reset Utility from Utilities menu, and after selecting the drive and the user, but instead of entering a new password, click the Reset button at the bottom of the window in the section referring to ACLs/home folder permissions. I would recommend doing this for both user accounts.
 
Unfortunately I don't have an install disk. I bought mountain lion through the app store and updated from Leopard. Is there another way I can utilize that particular utility?
 
itsjustmeee said:
Unfortunately I don't have an install disk. I bought mountain lion through the app store and updated from Leopard. Is there another way I can utilize that particular utility?
Click to expand...

Wait, wha? 2 problems here: You can't buy ML yet and you can't upgrade from Leopard. If you mean Lion and Snow Leopard respectively, that makes more sense.

If you have Lion installed, no need for the disks. Just hold "alt" at boot, go into "Recovery HD" and do it from there.

Open Terminal (in Recovery HD), enter "resetpassword" which will open the reset password utility, choose your drive, then your user from the drop down menu. At the bottom of the window where it says "Reset Home Directory Permissions and ACLs", click Reset and wait. That should fix it. Do this for both accounts.
 
Sorry about that. I went from Leopard to Lion. I guess the "mountain" part was just wishful thinking on my behalf!

Thanks for your help.
 
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